Aboard Captain Cook’s HMS Endeavour on the coasts of New Zealand, the naturalist, botanist and anthropologist Joseph Banks (1743-1820) noted in his journal of March 1770: “Tho the countrey is generally coverd with an abundant verdure of grass and trees I cannot say that it is productive of so great a variety as many countries I have seen. The intire novelty however of the greatest part of what we – no doubt here including his close naturalist friend and travel companion Daniel Solander (1733-1782) – found recompens’d us as natural historians for want of variety.” Avidly they collected specimens, and happily carried them home to London, where Banks in 1778 became the President of the Royal Society; thus he had great influence on the development of the sciences in England. In the process he stimulated many voyages of discovery, e.g. by George Vancouver (Pacific coasts of the Americas), Allan Cunningham (Brazil) and William Bligh – yes! he of the Mutiny on the Bounty – (South Pacific). It was in New Zealand – a bit mundane botanically for Banks and Solander – that they did collect a specimen of this stunningly beautiful Solanum laciniatum, the Large or Great Kangaroo Apple, called by the Maori poro-poro, and sometimes by us the Forest Tomato. There has been some debate about the plant’s provenance, but William Aiton (1731-1793), the director of the Botanical Gardens at Kew from 1759 onwards leaves no doubt in his description of 1789: he unequivocally states that it was collected and recorded by Banks in New Zealand. In New Zealand it was used by the Maori for skin treatments apparently especially in connection with tattooing. It is also widely distributed on the eastern coasts of Australia, and received its conventional name there of ‘Kangaroo Apple’, not because kangaroos feasted on the yellow or orange fruits but because its leaves in their development look like the hind footprint of our Happy Jumpers. Incidentally, Banks and Solander also collected plants around Cooktown on these coasts, and it was there that the word ‘kangaroo’ was first recorded; it seems to have been derived from the word ‘gaNurru’ in the Guugu Yimidhir native language of the area around the Endeavour River. Don’t eat the unripe fruits! They’re poisonous; but once ripe… And there’s a medicinal use, too, for this nightshade: extracted from it is an industrial steroid – diosgenin – which is used in human contraceptives. Regardless the flower’s viagratic color… This photo was flashed at the Jochum Hof, Steijl, The Netherlands, on a day that cleared up toward the evening.

HMS Endeavour, also known as HM Bark Endeavour, was a British Royal Navy research vessel commanded by Lieutenant James Cook on his first voyage of discovery, to Australia and New Zealand from 1769 to 1771. Launched in 1764 as the collier Earl of Pembroke, she was purchased by the Navy in 1768 for a scientific mission to the Pacific Ocean, and to explore the seas for the surmised Terra Australis Incognita or "unknown southern land". Renamed and commissioned as His Majesty's Bark the Endeavour, she departed Plymouth in August 1768, rounded Cape Horn, and reached Tahiti in time to observe the 1769 transit of Venus across the Sun. She then set sail into the largely uncharted ocean to the south, stopping at the Pacific islands of Huahine, Borabora, and Raiatea to allow Cook to claim them for Great Britain. In September 1769, she anchored off New Zealand, the first European vessel to reach the islands since Abel Tasman's Heemskerck 127 years earlier. In April 1770, Endeavour became the first seagoing vessel to reach the east coast of Australia, when Cook went ashore at what is now known as Botany Bay.